The Snake Pit (Enaville Resort)

The story

Built around 1880 at the fork of the Coeur d'Alene River, this dark wooden lodge has outlasted boomtown fortunes, logging rushes, and the railroad line that once brought travelers to its door. Over its 140-plus years, it was a hard-drinking outpost for miners and lumberjacks—local lore even puts lawman Wyatt Earp at the bar during the region's gold rush. But behind its rustic facade, it spent decades operating as a brothel and layover hotel. Look closely at the wooden sign out front: two skulls frame the wood, and in the brothel era, a red light mounted on the sign was switched on whenever the ladies upstairs were available for business.

The name itself carries a few layers of conspiratorial Silver Valley history. One story says a former owner kept live rattlesnakes in a pit out front to draw in passing crowds. Another version comes from old-timers who claim miners used 'snakes' as slang for the ladies of the morning, a moniker reinforced by the actual water snakes slithering around the swampy outhouses behind the building. When owners Josie and Al Bates took over in 1954, Josie christened the place 'Enaville Resort' strictly to sound respectable enough to secure a liquor license. During a massive river flood in 1974, the owners tied boats to the front steps and photographed them to send to state officials in Boise as proof that the 'resort' moniker was literal.

Step inside today and you're standing in an unedited archive of North Idaho grit. The walls and ceilings are blanketed with taxidermy heads, antique logging saws, mining pickaxes, vintage beaded purses, historical photos, and bumper stickers left by decades of road trippers. Hollywood took notice of the atmosphere in the 1990s, using the interior as a filming location for the 1997 Pierce Brosnan volcano disaster movie Dante's Peak.